Before you begin using this site, please make sure you have one of the
supported polytonic Greek fonts installed in your computer. You do not
need a Greek font to search the TLG® Canon bibliographies but you do need
a Greek font in order to view the texts in Greek. A
list of Greek fonts and information how to purchase them or download
them is provided in this document.

The system allows you to set your default settings (this option is not available in the trial version), e.g. the display font of your choice, how many results per page you wish to view at a time, how many lines of context, etc. Institutional users need to establish an account and login in order to take advantage of this feature.

Once you specify your preferences, these settings become part of your TLG account and will apply every time you login until you change them. You can change one or all of your settings at any time during a session by checking the appropriate box. If you wish to change your default settings for all your future sessions, you need to follow the link to the default settings page which is located at the right hand corner of each page and save your new selections.

Search the TLG

The TLG® site allows you to search the TLG textual and bibliographical materials.
You may begin your search from the Canon of
Greek Authors and Works (TLG Canon) or go directly
to the texts (TLG Texts).

We recommend beginning your search from the Canon if you are interested in
a particular author or ancient work; or you wish to limit your search
to a preselected group of authors or genre, historical period, or geographical location.
We recommend a text search if you wish to search the entire TLG®
corpus. In either case, your can always begin and change your search using
the sidebar links.

TLG Canon Search:

You can search the Canon by Author, Work or Published
edition. Please note that names of works and authors are stored in
Latin, not English or Greek; thus, the Iliad is stored as Ilias,
and John Chrysostom as Joannes Chrysostomus. However, even if
you enter part of the name of the author e.g. 'Chrysostom' for 'Chrysostomus'
the search engine will locate the author.

You can search an Author by:

The author's name (or Canon number, if you know it), e.g. Homer(us)
or 0012. You may also compile your own list of authors by selecting
authors by letter. The complete TLG® author list is very long and may be
slow to open. We recommend that you browse the author list and select your
authors by letter. The search engine remembers your selection from the
preceding screen selection. When you are ready to proceed to the simple search,
the system will produce a list of all authors you have selected.

Date. If you select this option the system will
search through authors whose date can be determined with certainty. If
you wish to include in your search authors of uncertain date, you need
to check the box next to the scroll down menu to include varia,incerta,ante- and post- dates. Or,

You can search for a certain Publication, i.e. modern text edition by:

its title, e.g. Euripides Fabulae

the title of the publication series, e.g. Corpus Christianorum or

the name of its editor, e.g. B. Snell

Once you have made your selection, the search engine returns all the matching
authors or works, with bibliographic details on each. You may search all
retrieved items by pressing Search all texts, or click the checkboxes
of the items you are interested in, and press Search selected texts.
You can also click on Show works for any given author to select
and search through that author's works instead.

You are now presented with the Simple search form and you can
begin searching the texts you have selected. If you prefer to search the
entire corpus you have the option to reach this form directly from the
sidebar without going through the Canon.

Simple Text Search

If you have already selected one or more authors from the Canon
Search, your selection will appear at the top. Otherwise, the search engine
assumes that you want a Full Corpus Search. Now you are ready to enter a word or string of characters to search for.

** Please note that most browsers do not allow you to input Greek, so
you will have to enter the word you wish to search in Latin Transliteration
or Beta code. (Click
here if you want to read a more technical description on how to configure
your font and input Greek). Even is you cannot input your search in Greek,
you should be able to see your results in the Greek font you have selected
(provided that this Greek font is installed in your computer.

You have a choice between a Textual Search or a TLG
Word index Search. If you select Word Index, the search goes
through all the word forms in the corpus. The text you have typed in is
treated as a prefix of possible words to look for. (You can use space to
terminate the word you are looking for.) You will then be presented with
a list of all such word forms present in the texts you are searching through.
You can select the word forms to actually search, or request a search through
all the found word forms.

If you select Textual Search, on the other hand, the search does
not use the word index, but goes through the actual text files, character
by character, to find the text you have specified. This text will be found
anywhere in a word, and can even span across words. (Space can be used
to indicate the beginning and end of words.) However, such searches are
going to be significantly slower than word-index searches, particularly
for the full corpus.

Once you select the type of search (textual or Word Index) the search engine returns its results to you one page at a time. If a search times out (would take more
than ten seconds), the search engine stops and asks you whether to continue
its search, or display the results it has found so far. If your search
is long, you may have to press Next Results to view the next page
of results. Each result is displayed with a reference to its Canon bibliography
and citation information so that you can locate the text in the printed
edition. At this point, you also have the option to browse the text
in its context.

If you wish to have your results printed, click on the "Printable Form" button at the end of the page.

The TLG allows you to save up to 10 completed searches to review at a later time. To save a search click at the "Save Search" button located at the end of each text search page. Your searches are saved on a separate page and can always be accessed by following the "View my searches" links.

Canon Searches:Date: Prints the date each search was saved.Annotation: An additional box is provided for your own annotation. Click on "Apply Changes" to save the annotation.Display:Displays the saved searchEdit: gives you the option to delete items from a saved search or modify an existing search and save the results as a new search.Merge: Allows you to click on two searches at the time and merge the results of these searches. This function works with similar types of searches only, i.e. you can merge two Author searches but not an Author and Work search.Delete: click on the box to permanently delete a search.

Text Searches
Text searches can also be saved. Please note that a saved search is recreated every time you request its display (the system saves only the parameters of your search) so a long search (e.g. a full corpus textual search) will take as long to resolve when you restore it as it took the first time you did the search. In the case of long searches where you may have to go through several pages (by clicking on "Next Results') you may use the 'save' feature at any point/page of your search. However, when you restore your search, the restoration will always begin from the first page.

Saved text searches can be displayed or deleted. You cannot merge or edit a textual search. However, you can use the Save As option of your browser to export a search on your desktop and edit the search results using your word processing software.

Advanced Search

The Advanced Search works the same way as the Simple Search,
except that it offers more options. It allows you to do wildcard and proximity
searches, i.e. search for words in the vicinity of other words. For more
information about Wildcard and Proximity searches, please read the longer
version of the documentation.